Category: Uncategorized

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Naturally Low Hair Density or Am I Balding?

Hi there. I have always had a low density of hair around the top part of my scalp since my early teens however I have recently become much more conscious about it. For example after a shower my scalp is quite visible on the top part of my scalp and also when i part my hair when it is dry i can see through it under bright light. I have not undergone any considerable amounts hairloss nor have undergone any noticeable thinning of my hair but simply just feel that my scalp is quite visible on all parts of my top scalp. At a closer look its quite easy to see that my individual hairs are quite equally spaced out and is the main reason why i can see my scalp under the light. I am wondering whether this could just be my natural hair density that i have inherited from my mum (who also has a similar issue) or an early sign of male pattern baldness from my father’s side. Your reply and advice would be much appreciated. Thank you very much 🙂

If your hair is wet it will obviously look thinner as your hairs are separated from each other to expose the scalp. When you’re under a bright light it also will look thinner as the light illuminates your scalp between the hairs. This should be common sense.

If you are wondering if you are going bald you will likely see a pattern of thinning (see: https://newhair.com/resources/assessing-hair-loss/).

If you are still not certain you can see a a doctor for an exam and bulk measurement. We offer this in our practice in a free consultation with specialized instruments that measure, with good accuracy, your present hair loss status. We can often use this information to predict your future direction of hair loss.

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Need an inexpensive hair transplant, advice?

I have about £2 to 3000 to spend and I thought it might be worth investing in a new head of hair. I’m 27 and rapidly losing hair. I’m comfortable with a shaved head but I actually would like the option of growing it out. Are there any clinics or websites that people recommend? I know going to Turkey is much cheaper but will that mean compromising on quality? Will I be able to shave my head in the interim period where my hair is going to be growing out? I actually applied to qunomedical but I was put off a bit with how much they whatsapped and called. I felt they were trying to pressure me when I just wanted the time to think about it as it’s quite a substantial investment.

I just met with one of my patients who had a cheep hair transplant done 10 years ago and now is fully fixed and done. For a few years he hid with a hat on his head, ashamed about his appearance after getting a very inexpensive hair transplant at a clinic he found. He spend more money fixing it by a long shot than if he ever did it right the first time, but he was lucky because they didn’t destroy his donor area as many of the cheep Turkey clinics do. Be smart about a hair transplant. Would you try to find a cheep heart transplant surgeon when you have one ‘crack at the apple’?


2020-11-23 11:24:58Need an inexpensive hair transplant, advice?

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Can Oxycodone/Norco Medication Cause Hair Loss?

Patient reports: I believe that I was a victim of hair loss in the few months that I was given Oxycodone/Norco medication for my back pain. My hair has not grown back.

It is not generally believed that these two medications can cause hair loss; nevertheless, with your comments as well as a few similar comments on a recent Google search (I suspect like all medications), hair loss is always a risk, even if it is a small risk.


2018-05-16 13:13:39Can Oxycodone/Norco Medication Cause Hair Loss?

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New Drug for Ed in Men Called Bremelanotide Could Possibly Be Effective in Post-Finasteride Syndrome

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/14999221/

Abstract

PT-141, a cyclic heptapeptide melanocortin analog, was evaluated following subcutaneous administration to healthy male subjects and to patients with erectile dysfunction (ED) who report an inadequate response to Viagra. An inadequate response was defined for this study by patient report indicating that achievement of an erection suitable for vaginal penetration occurred < or =50% of the time while taking 100 mg Viagra. Erectile responses were assessed by RigiScan in healthy subjects in the absence of visual sexual stimulation (VSS) and in ED patients in the presence of VSS. Doses ranging from 0.3 to 10 mg were administered to healthy male subjects, resulting in a statistically significant erectile response at doses greater than 1.0 mg. ED patients were treated with placebo, 4 or 6 mg PT-141 in a crossover design in the presence of VSS. The erectile response induced by PT-141 was statistically significant at both doses. PT-141 was safe and well tolerated in both studies. The erectogenic potential of PT-141, its tolerability profile and its ability to cause significant erections in patients who do not have an adequate response to a PDE5 inhibitor suggest that PT-141 may provide an alternative treatment for ED with a potentially broad patient base.


2018-06-19 09:53:00New Drug for Ed in Men Called Bremelanotide Could Possibly Be Effective in Post-Finasteride Syndrome

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Can Propecia Regrowth Come in Cycles?

First off, thanks doctor for all the help you have given. Your site is very helpful.

I actually have a one question and also a comment about propecia.

Firstly, I have been experiencing balding at my hairline for about a year and a half. It hasn’t gotten too bad yet and is moving quite slowly. I started on propecia about 6 months ago and have recently seen a slowing in the shedding of my hairline. Also I have seen a slight thickening in the hair in right at the hairline. The hairs that are growing are small and kind of thin though, so I was wondering if hair regrowth with propecia can come in cycles. Will it start as smaller miniaturized hairs, then the next cycle will they be thicker? Just wondering if this was common for the drug in your experiences.

My second comment was on the side effects of the drug. About a month after I started I noticed drastic sexual side effects. My sex drive was still there, but I could not sustain an erection. I cut back to half a pill a day and that helped at first, but once again I fell into that same situation. Recently though I’ve notice just as drastic of an improvement though. It almost seems over night the sexual side effects went away. I have even gone back to a whole pill and have no noticeable side effects. Is it normal for the side effects to go away so suddenly? Also, could such strong side effects mean that the pill is working well on me? Not that I’m complaining, just interested to know. I am glad I stuck it out though, seems it just took time for my body to adjust.

Thanks for everything in advance!

Many people who get a decreased libido can work it out the way you did. Hair loss comes in cycles, but Propecia (finasteride 1mg) does not work in that fashion. At times, you may find the hair loss will occur even when you are on the drug, and that hair loss occurs in bursts. The focus here was on libido and hopefully your libido problem has been solved. With regard to other side effects, they tend to occur and stay around while you are on the drug, like decreased volume of your ejaculate after orgasm or breast tenderness. Of course, breast pain could be brought on by other causes as well (even breast lumps, although very rarely from Propecia), so if you get them you should see your doctor.

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New Your Times Article Giving Insight into Hair Stem Cells

Losing Your Hair? You Might Blame the Great Stem Cell Escape.

By observing mouse hair follicles, scientists discovered an unexpected mechanism of aging. “If I didn’t see it with my own eyes I wouldn’t believe it,” one said.

Credit…Alamy

By Gina Kolata

Oct. 4, 2021

Every person, every mouse, every dog, has one unmistakable sign of aging: hair loss. But why does that happen?

Rui Yi, a professor of pathology at Northwestern University, set out to answer the question.

A generally accepted hypothesis about stem cells says they replenish tissues and organs, including hair, but they will eventually be exhausted and then die in place. This process is seen as an integral part of aging.

Instead Dr. Yi and his colleagues made a surprising discovery that, at least in the hair of aging animals, stem cells escape from the structures that house them.

“It’s a new way of thinking about aging,” said Dr. Cheng-Ming Chuong, a skin cell researcher and professor of pathology at the University of Southern California, who was not involved in Dr. Yi’s study, which was published on Monday in the journal Nature Aging.

The study also identifies two genes involved in the aging of hair, opening up new possibilities for stopping the process by preventing stem cells from escaping.

Charles K.F. Chan, a stem cell researcher at Stanford University, called the paper “very important,” noting that “in science, everything about aging seems so complicated we don’t know where to start.” By showing a pathway and a mechanism for explaining aging hair, Dr. Yi and colleagues may have provided a toehold.

Stem cells play a crucial role in the growth of hair in mice and in humans. Hair follicles, the tunnel-shaped miniature organs from which hairs grow, go through cyclical periods of growth in which a population of stem cells living in a specialized region called the bulge divide and become rapidly growing hair cells.

Sarah Millar, director of the Black Family Stem Cell Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who was not involved in Dr. Yi’s paper, explained that those cells give rise to the hair shaft and its sheath. Then, after a period of time, which is short for human body hair and much longer for hair on a person’s head, the follicle becomes inactive and its lower part degenerates. The hair shaft stops growing and is shed, only to be replaced by a new strand of hair as the cycle repeats.

But while the rest of the follicle dies, a collection of stem cells remains in the bulge, ready to start turning into hair cells to grow a new strand of hair.\

Together with a graduate student, Chi Zhang, Dr. Yi decided that to understand the aging process in hair, he needed to watch individual strands of hair as they grew and aged.

Ordinarily, researchers who study aging take chunks of tissue from animals of different ages and examine the changes. There are two drawbacks to this approach, Dr. Yi said. First, the tissue is already dead. And it is not clear what led to the changes that are observed or what will come after them.

He decided his team would use a different method. They watched the growth of individual hair follicles in the ears of mice using a long wavelength laser that can penetrate deep into tissue. They labeled hair follicles with a green fluorescent protein, anesthetized the animals so they did not move, put their ear under the microscope and went back again and again to watch what was happening to the same hair follicle.

Video

Cinemagraph
Colored arrows point to escaping stem cells on a hair follicle.CreditCredit…Rui Yi

What they saw was a surprise: When the animals started to grow old and gray and lose their hair, their stem cells started to escape their little homes in the bulge. The cells changed their shapes from round to amoeba-like and squeezed out of tiny holes in the follicle. Then they recovered their normal shapes and darted away.

Sometimes, the escaping stem cells leapt long distances, in cellular terms, from the niche where they lived.

“If I did not see it for myself I would not have believed it,” Dr. Yi said. “It’s almost crazy in my mind.”

The stem cells then vanished, perhaps consumed by the immune system.

Dr. Chan compared an animal’s body to a car. “If you run it long enough and don’t replace parts, things wear out,” he said. In the body, stem cells are like a mechanic, providing replacement parts, and in some organs like hair, blood and bone, the replacement is continual.

But with hair, it now looks as if the mechanic — the stem cells — simply walks off the job one day.

 

Image

Researchers manipulated the genes of this mouse. By 18 months old, it had rapid hair loss, but was otherwise healthy.
Credit…Rui Yi and Chi Zhang

But why? Dr. Yi and his colleagues’ next step was to ask if genes are controlling the process. They discovered two — FOXC1 and NFATC1 — that were less active in older hair follicle cells. Their role was to imprison stem cells in the bulge. So the researchers bred mice that lacked those genes to see if they were the master controllers.

By the time the mice were 4 to 5 months old, they started losing hair. By age 16 months, when the animals were middle-aged, they looked ancient: They had lost a lot of hair and the sparse strands remaining were gray.

Now the researchers want to save the hair stem cells in aging mice.

This story of the discovery of a completely unexpected natural process makes Dr. Chuong wonder what remains to be learned about living creatures.

“Nature has endless surprises waiting for us,” he said. “You can see fantastic things.”


2021-10-10 10:25:12New Your Times Article Giving Insight into Hair Stem Cells

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Can Saw Palmetto and Finasteride produce sexual side effects?

I keep seeing posts about how much Saw Palmetto to take to equal Fin. This makes me think people think Saw Palmetto is safe v fin. It’s the same mechanism, it isn’t dose dependent. Once you start altering DHT you start affecting the RECEPTORS. The receptors can shut down and that’s what people think causes the problems with both drugs. Your DHT goes back to normal. Test back to normal. But the receptors are basically off. You could do that with .0000001mg of fin or one pill of Saw Palmetto. What anyone chooses to do is up to them, but they should know that Saw Palmetto can definitely cause the exact same issues as Fin. Also, the problems mostly arise AFTER you stop. And the medicine (SP and Fin) works by literally making you less masculine, which is why trans people come in here looking like 16 year old Justin Bieber’s with all the hair gains. None of this is opinion. All the side effects listed are not side effects, they are direct effects

The placebo effect of both of these medications are the same but I doubt that there is enough DHT blocker in Saw Palmetto to product any significant sexual side effects


2020-12-06 10:32:55Can Saw Palmetto and Finasteride produce sexual side effects?

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Nizoral and Seborrheic Dermatitis

(male) I was recently prescribed Nizoral 2% and clobex lotion for a condition of moderate seborrheic dermatitis. I was told to use each once per day for a month. At the time of my doctors visit, i made a point of telling the doctor that my hair has been chemically processed quite a bit over the past few years (coloring and bleaching) and that I was concerned that he give me something that would not damage it. Within a couple of days, my hair was dried out to the point of being like straw and was breaking off near the roots. Since then I have been experiencing an abnormal amount of hair fall on a daily basis. All of the literature I can find on the 2% Nizoral seems to say that is should be used only once and then on a very intermittent basis. I am wondering what you think of the dosage that was prescribed for my condition? I should add that I have since changed doctors and have been told to use Fluocinolone acetonide 0.01% which has cleared my scalp condition in only 2 weeks. So now my scalp condition is better but my hair is stlll breaking off and falling out. Any advice?

My response to such questions requires a face-to-face meeting and an examination. The practice of medicine is an art form that caring doctors in the ‘hair’ field base their views on such issues as yours after a direct examination of the hair and scalp. Nizoral should not be abused and should always be taken as directed. If a doctor recommended a more frequent use, your probe of the problem should be directed to that doctor. Chemicals that seep into the hair follicles can damage them. Questions that an examination of the hair and scalp would point to include the differential diagnosis between telogen effluvium and cyclical genetic hair loss. I am happy to hear that your seborrheic dermatitis has resolved.


2008-03-11 14:47:36Nizoral and Seborrheic Dermatitis

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Can I Take Testosterone and Finasteride at the Same Time?

I’m 23 and I started losing hair since 18 but not in an aggressive way. I am still an NW 2/3. Recently, I’ve started TRT because my Testosterone results came back a bit low. For the past two months. I have been thinking about hopping on the big 3 minox/fin/niz since I still have a good amount of hair, but I am really hesitant to start Finasteride because of the horror stories I have read and heard about the side effects.

So, what do you think?

Men who take testosterone and have the genes for hair loss lose hair regardless of taking Finasteride. Additionally, young men should not take testosterone.